Troy Senik: Governors preferable to senators for 2016

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks to reporters after he spoke on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours. Cruz ended his marathon speech against Obamacare at noon Wednesday. GETTY IMAGES

Here’s a chilling thought: The difference between an opinion journalist like yours truly and a United States senator? No more than a gaggle of staffers and the power to have your views written into federal law. That, and it’s marginally easier for me to do my job only partially clothed (not that some senators haven’t tried).

There’s no special talent required to be a member of the nation’s upper chamber. You are not charged with administering anything larger than your own office, which is not beset by the sort of mind-numbing bureaucracy that plagues the executive branch. You have to face the voters only every six years. The only real responsibilities of the position are talking and voting, both of which tend to be inversely correlated to the health of the republic. All you need is a big mouth and an opinion.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It is, after all, the very nature of a legislative branch. It does, however, prompt an unavoidable question: Why would we ever consider anyone from among the Senate’s ranks when choosing a president of the United States?

The obvious example, if only because he’s the most recent, is President Obama. What made his short tenure in the Senate distinctive was that he was one of the few legislators actually worth listening to – sonorous of voice, seemingly temperate of disposition, ostensibly conciliatory. There was never much substance there, but it sure sounded good – like a national white-noise machine.

Give him the responsibility for running something, however, and the guy goes to shambles. Those “shovel-ready jobs” promised by the stimulus plan? They ended up being in such short supply that even the president himself now cracks jokes about them. Obamacare? Every day brings another broken promise, whether it’s assurances of lower costs or guarantees that everyone will get to keep their insurance if they like it. What did we expect from a man who had never previously assembled anything more complex than a couple of autobiographies? The vacillating, unsure diplomacy with Syria? Obama’s background in adversarial negotiations probably reached its high-water mark at a car dealership.

Note that this is not an inherently partisan argument. You don’t have to be a conservative to recognize a certain thumbless quality to the president’s management style, as evinced by the many liberals who were distraught by his vacillation on Syria. By the same measure, you can find a similarly callow bearing in some of the biggest Republican stars in the upper chamber. Marco Rubio has spent the better part of the year quarterbacking an immigration reform effort so confused that he himself eventually came perilously close to opposing it. Ted Cruz’s implausible effort to defund Obamacare became so convoluted that he ended up filibustering legislation he supported on the Senate floor.

Make no mistake, there are senators who know a thing or two about management but – precisely because they are attuned to the nuances of governing – they don’t tend to make the same waves as outspoken show horses like Rubio, Cruz, Chuck Schumer or Elizabeth Warren. The skill set that’s necessary to give a good press conference does not necessarily correspond with the skill set necessary to effectively run a government. If a half-decade of Barack Obama – a national exercise in “it seemed like such a good idea at the time” – doesn’t prove that, nothing ever will.

Like it or not, we’re only about a year away from the next presidential race beginning in earnest. When that time comes, both parties should be wary of turning to any candidate who hails from the Senate, a body where opinion is unmoored from responsibility. They should look, instead, toward candidates with executive experience – individuals who have managed bureaucracies, set governing agendas, made tough decisions and endured the unique scrutiny of being a chief executive. Given the current state of the nation, it’s time that we hand things back to people with that kind of poise. The adolescents have been running the show for long enough.

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